


space, a love story

by lishiyo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lishiyo/pseuds/lishiyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wolves are here. People are dying. Stiles is quiet, and Derek has yet to stop running. </p><p>He's never had a reason to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	space, a love story

**Author's Note:**

> In the headcanon for this story, Derek and Laura are on the run for ~six years along the East Coast before Laura returns and sets off the first episode of Teen Wolf.

Beacon Hills is one of those sleepy towns that dot the wilderness of northern California like suburban pit stops born and bred to send truckers and runaways on their way to brighter places, places with names like L. A. and San Fran and The Big City. Places where the people’ll remember your car first, where even the stars don’t glitter the same. Maybe that’s why Derek keeps coming back to this gas station on the corner of fifth and Main twice a week, throwing the energy drinks in his basket without another glance before pausing by the frozen foods aisle. Laura would be mad at him, alright, for a third week in a row of Marie Callender’s finest, but it wasn’t Derek’s fault she thought they’d be doing better by now, be past the donuts and the Dorito’s and the heady smell of Wawa’s coffee at five in the morning.  _A growing boy should be eating right_ , she’d mutter, one eye on Derek hovering by the icees, the other on the bleary-eyed policeman fumbling with his sugar.   
  
Laura can’t run anymore, but Derek Hale’s never stopped, so he dumps the lasagna and the jerky in the basket and gets in line and closes his eyes for a sec, because the light’s too bright and the tv in the back’s too loud.   
  
He’d expected the power, yeah, but nobody ever told him that becoming an alpha would also amplify his senses like this.   
  
Growing up as a lanky kid of the werewolf persuasion he’d spent a long time calibrating himself to fit right, to not run too fast or hit too hard, to stumble in lacrosse and weaken his handshake. To play -  _gently_  - with the non-wolf siblings. To unfocus his eyes, dampen his ears, let till everything grey out into a pleasant drone (not too hard in Mrs. Dunslow’s math class). Now thanks to the Alpha shift he’s back in junior year where the hormones buzzing around keep knocking him off-kilter, pushing his nose into overdrive and ears into  _things-I-didn’t-need-to-know_  territory, except this time the hormones include sunlight glinting off puddles and exhaust fumes and Scott’s incredibly gross and potentially illegal socks; the irritating cough of the last man in front of him ( _respiratory infection_ ) and the fly trapped in the corner above the tacos and the TV in the back that keeps murmuring about the third man dead this week, in a town where nothing’s supposed to happen, in a town that’s been torn apart by something they can’t understand. Like there’s some kind of crazy terrorist plot going on. Like there’s something Derek can do about it.   
  
“Kinda scary, huh,” the pimply kid holding his Gatorade says. He’s been working here for three months and has watery eyes and a nervous mouth and still hasn’t been able to look up into Derek’s eyes. “Heard Homeland Security’s coming in.”  
  
“That bad,” Derek says, mildly, though what he means is  _not interested_.   
  
“So...think they’ll catch the bad guys?”   
  
“Depends who the bad guys are,” Derek says.   
  
“I think it actually is the terrorists, just not, like, you know -  _Muslims_ , like they’re saying at school and stuff,” The kid’s getting excited now, all elbows and joints; handing back Derek’s credit card, he manages to knock over the Red Bull and that bumps into the line of Monsters Derek has very neatly set up on the counter to tempt a clumsy idiot’s hand to swipe over only for Derek - stupid,  _stupid_  Derek -  
  
\- to Spiderman reflex back onto the counter.  
  
The kid’s eyes are huge.   
  
“They’re not terrorists,” Derek says.  
  
“Wow,” the kid says.  
  
“Who do you think they are?” the kid says.   
  
“Worse,” Derek says, picking up the bags, not waiting to hear the breeze shut the door behind him.

  
***

  
With the borderline allergy to sunlight and human life that Derek has going on, he only makes these runs to the gas station at night, when the air is cold and empty of everything but crickets. It starts after the pizza delivery guy keeps trying to bum weed off him (“dude...I know you must have some sick parties bro, to be getting all this pizza”) and it lasts because Derek keeps coming home exhausted and the house is quiet and hollow and the memory of the gas stations, the convenience stores keeps lingering on him like the smell of crumpled Lay’s and hotdogs and bad mothering in his leather jacket. But maybe that’s only right, and Laura’s still pushing against nature: wolves are restless, after all, they were born to be on the move, to sleep by the road. Make their homes not in the cities, but in the spaces between them.   
  
A trail of gas stations along the West coast is marked with their triskele.   
  
Derek pulls up the edges of his collar as a cop car about five miles off pierces the night with its wail.   
  
It’s not Stilinski. His alarm has a stutter in it. Derek stops anyway to watch an owl on the other side of the copse sweep through the thick branches into a wilderness that seems, every day, to grow. Weeds, swallowing the edges of these parking lots, these cracked roads too long deprived of funding. Stars, retaking a sky so long dimmed by human civilization and human waste. A moon that can’t grow bright enough to keep the night from sinking down the town’s rooftops with the highschoolers inside them, still partying and drinking.  
  
Sometimes Derek wonders if it’ll be like this, if Beacon Hills is the test case: cities, dancing and whirling their way to oblivion.   
  
While the wolves watch. While the wolves wait. The bags are growing heavier so Derek switches hands and starts on a light run, taking the long way, round Stilinski and McCall’s row of houses where the scent of mountain ash is heaviest. Next time he’ll switch to another gas station, he thinks. Keep rotating around four or five so he’s not always coming back to the same one.   
  
It’s not good to settle into a routine.

  
***

  
Somedays it’s too bright and cheery to wake up.  
  
Stiles makes himself sit up; manages in one slow, torturous motion to hit his head on the headboard and just as the pain’s still reverberating through his skull poke his elbow into the chemistry textbook that’s still open to the pages he was supposed to finish last night.   
  
“Aw, fuck.”   
  
But his dad hasn’t knocked on his door yet, so it’s still before a quarter to seven. He can totally still do this. About two-thirds, in fact, if he skips breakfast and speed-demons his way to Scott’s place, where a 66% is probably still higher than whatever’s Scott’s average right now. The floor looks like the beginning of an application to  _Hoarders_ , youth edition, but he manages to step around the sprawled maps and yellowed books -  _they’re for a big school project, Dad_  - and Deaton’s packets of various unpronounceable Eastern European plant material to rummage for his phone. One missed message.   
  
 _Don’t come after school_ , the text says.   
  
“Fuck off, Derek,” Stiles says. And types,  _whos gonna watch ur Na levels._    
  
Types,  _that’s sodium btw._    
  
He’s already halfway down the stairs fighting with the backpack zipper when Scott finally picks up, sounding as dubiously alive as always. “Oi. Scott. I’ve coming over for that chem homework  _right now_ , so wake up and -”  
  
“I... wha?” One of these days, Stiles is going to send Scott’s genes in for testing for vegetable matter. “... I mean - no. No, dude, it’s okay. I’m all set.”   
  
Scott’s voice, sleepy and happy: “Did it with Isaac yesterday. We finished it, so it’s all...good...”  
  
Pause.   
  
“...Stiles?”  
  
“...right. That’s uh, that’s great. Scott. See at you school then,” Stiles says, pushing a hand through his hair.   
  
Stiles puts down his backpack.   
  
The kitchen’s freezing when Stiles pads in on his socks and sets his chem textbook on the table. The white light trickling through the kitchen window’s collected as shallow pools of spring on the dishes, the tablecloth, the three woodframed photos under the clock. On the note by the sink that says, in the Sheriff’s neat blockprint  
  
OUT FOR WORK EARLY   
DON’T FORGET BREAKFAST  
  
Stiles sits down and opens the textbook and takes out a blank piece of paper and watches the beginning of summer drift by in the spaces between the quiet ticks of the clock. The chill settles in his fingertips even with the sun. After a while, he goes back up to his room, which is messier but has no photos.

  
****

  
D brushes by the other planet on accident when they’re both watching something else, a minor galactic event in a universe where whole fields of stars light and die every day.   
  
D spins and spins without a single rule except never to near the gravitational fields of stronger bodies; S follows the same revolution around the same stars without end as if trapped there by the laws of physics. D’s trajectory is erratic but lets him roam free without the kinds of collisions that could pull him into precisely such orbits. S’s orbit is inescapable but lets him endure collisions and know where to keep going after.   
  
After the accident, D stays, though it’s a safe distance. S wobbles but recovers by the next revolution.   
  
When D brushes past, it’s not like he expected. He’s gotten used to the coldness of the space that lies outside the star ranges, but this planet has a star and isn’t warm either, like the side he brushed had once faced another sun and it faded.

  
****

  
Everything is too bright. Everything is too loud. He’s kept up at night by the sound of the faucet dripping and the skittering in the attic of the mouse that he has allowed, for now, to live, after killing its entire family. He stays on the other side of the hospital’s parking lot and with his eyes closed counts the entries and their urgency by the slap of their footsteps and takes to wearing sunglasses during the day, indoors, which he knows makes him look like a pedophile (Isaac has good intentions, but he’s a horrible liar) and after accidentally crushing the hand of the plumber, stops shaking hands altogether.   
  
“Been working out,” Derek says, apologizing.   
  
“You need to tell me your regimen,” the plumber, whose name is Greg, laughs.   
  
The moonlight is bearable, because he’s a wolf, after all, made of moonstuff and far-flung nights and darker things. Every night when he runs himself exhausted through the quiet city to wear out the engine inside him that keeps urging him to go, go forward, open your ears and stretch your legs and  _howl_  - the moon’s always straight above and untouchable and it’s the slender row of lights at the edge of the condemned warehouses that stops him, pulls him up with the scent of fresh grass and dew rushing into his lungs.  
  
They’re not even the city limits, but sometimes Derek thinks if he crossed them, he wouldn’t come back. Just run and run with this endless momentum inside him until the sun came up and everything faded into something grey and mute and content. Not this stupid riot of bright colors and noise and spring and the sickly scent of death, the scent of wrongness -  _their_  scent - that seems to cling to every shadow in Beacon Hills nowadays.   
  
It’s funny, though, Derek thinks, as he listens to some far-off squirrel tap at a nut in a frustrated rhythm. Everything’s gotten louder these days, but Stiles is quieter.

  
****

  
Stiles starts running at night.   
  
It starts because he needs to clear his head after several hours of detention with Mr. Harris, which probably inspired the founding members of the Anarchists and several serial killers, and it lasts because his dad never gets home before midnight and Isaac must give  _amazing_  head to keep Scott studying this much and the empty house isn’t quite as productive as you’d hope when you’re fighting for your grades and your life.   
  
Maybe it’s the clutter. Life, meet metaphor. Metaphor, meet the alphas - they’re nice, they’re old money, they’ve got very white teeth; only catch is the whole genocide thing, but hey, what’s politics between folks?   
  
He’s gone several miles by the stream and the moon’s hanging high when Stiles pulls up back at the driveway, breathless, shirt soaked with sweat and dew, still debating the logistics of an ash trap combined with Lydia’s developing and slightly terrifying napalm skills. With his mind still busy he almost misses the shadow that peels away with eye-blurring speed from the other side to slam him straight - ow, that was a rib protesting - against the garage door.   
  
Almost. “Derek,” Stiles breathes out, leaving the question in his name.   
  
“You will begin training with Argent and Morell, starting  _tomorrow_.”   
  
Well, Derek’s social skills haven’t improved as much as one would hope, but that’s next on the agenda. And really, he doesn’t sound quite so eager for tender young throats these days, just kinda broad-shouldered and intimidating with those glowering red eyes and curved fangs that he likes to place very, very close to Stiles’s face.   
  
“So. You, uh, you’ve finally seen the light, eh? Looks like you need me.”  
  
“Like I need herpes,” Derek says, and bares a fang before Stiles’s mouth can twitch upwards. “I will  _allow_  you to attend our pack meetings. I will  _allow_  you to contribute - when necessary - but I will  _not_  be covering for you in a fight. You  _will_  pull your own weight, and you  _will_  learn to defend yourself.”   
  
“Well, duh,” Stiles says. “I’m the son of a Sheriff. Almost managed to hit a Romney sign from two feet away yesterday.”    
  
The look Derek gives him suggests he does not find this amusing. (Maybe he’s a Republican? Out of all the things Stiles thought would be the boner killer, among them the whole different species thing, and the whole celibacy thing, and the whole death-to-Stiles thing if Derek ever found out...)  
  
“And I want you to stop running around at night,” Derek says. At Stiles’s look: “Yeah. I know. For a smart kid, how  _stupid_  can you be, Stiles?”  
  
“...Is that a rhetorical question?”  
  
“This city belongs to  _wolves_  now, Stiles. Wolves. Not humans. And definitely not some teenage kids.” Stiles looks up and then suddenly it’s Derek’s eyes, slivered knives of moonlight in the darkness, pinning him down. And then suddenly it’s indescribably hot, that little triangle of bare skin where Derek’s grip, rough and callused, is pressing hard on his wrist. A squirm shudders through his body, helplessly, but Derek doesn’t even notice. Doesn’t even waver from Stiles’s face. “Think about yourself for once, Stiles, and  _stay. at. home_.”   
  
Stiles’s cheeks are getting cold from the night breeze, but everything else is so, so warm in a painfully virginal and awfully thrilled way at being trapped under Derek’s larger form, which is an inch taller and can cover every part of him from the wind.   
  
Stupid hormones. Stupid Stiles.   
  
“Come on, these nightly jogs?  _Are_  about myself. What, you think I’m running off to secret trysts with Scott here?”  
  
“I think it’s got something to do with Scott,” Derek says. Hesitates; “or your father.”  
  
Stiles stares. After a heartbeat passes, Derek’s the first to look away. 

Exhales. “What if... what if I beat you in a fight? Let’s make it a bet - if I win, you have to stay out of my life.”   
  
“I am out of your life,” Derek says.   
  
“My life where I’m attempting to make the track team,” Stiles says. “No more slamming me into hard surfaces over my nightly proclivities.  _Especially_  over my nightly proclivities.”  
  
“Odds are a bit stacked against you,” Derek says, in a tone that suggests he’s quite alright with that.  
  
“No,  _you_  winning will be defined as me failing to pull my own weight,” Stiles says, tugging out his wrist. “I’ll probably be dead if that happens, but at least you’ll have the pleasure of knowing I feel really guilty in hell.”   
  
“What do I get,” says Derek, who still sounds quite confident in his chances.  
  
“Free blowjobs for life. Well, duh, what do you think? You get to order me around like the big bad alpha you are and tell me to stay out of your fur forever and I’ll actually listen for once.”  
  
“I accept,” Derek says, and Stiles’s lizard brain pauses to think about whether the speed of that response was to the blowjobs, or the other thing.  
  
“Then I win,” Stiles says, and nudges his arm away to slip out, glancing back at Derek’s face as it dawns on him.   
  
Stiles heads inside to wash the ash off his hands.

  
****

  
“I’ve got homemade mac and cheese,” he calls out from his bedroom window. “I know you haven’t had dinner, Derek, and I’m only letting you out if you agree to taste test my new recipe.”   
  
“Break the damn circle,” the voice of a very unhappy wolf snaps back.  
  
“Five cheeses, Derek.  _Five cheeses._ ”

  
****

  
In the end, Derek takes the leftovers too.

  
****

  
Derek is the first to admit that occasionally, for a big bad alpha, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.   
  
Well - not occasionally. Some of the time.  
  
Most of the time.   
  
If Laura were here she’d be blaming herself again, so Derek resists it on impulse. It’s his own damn fault he’s spent so long figuring out how to be human he forgot about his wolf, and the anger he’s been using as anchor for six years is starting to rust at the ends under the exhaustion and the vigilance and the demands of being an alpha. There are too many things to split his attention these days, too many people dying and new elements crashing and burning into his plans (Homeland Security is a pain in the ass, Derek decides, after narrowly dragging Scott out of the way of their flashlights) and that’s probably why his senses have gone haywire more than anything else. He’s - stretched too thinly at the edges, more like saran wrap than armor, and that leaves him weak and vulnerable in places.  
  
That’s how Stiles managed to get him, he thinks. Stiles is like some sort of black hole when it comes to his senses - all the bird-chirping and the smell of gasoline and the shouting of Stiles’s neighbors with their one-year-old just zeroes out, gets sucked into this kid’s big, fidgety mouth and huge brown eyes when he nears Derek’s radar. That’s how annoying Stiles is, he manages to out-annoy the earth. So the things Derek should be noticing from miles away, like a hand dripping ash down his back? Hah. Right. It’s no good to have the best hearing on earth, if your attention’s snagged on the strands in one voice.   
  
But one distraction’s the same as any other, and nothing’s changed since the days of Laura rebuking him for never taking care of himself properly, so after the next few nights of running through empty, echoing streets he doesn’t resist when the glimmer of the moonlight on the wet gravel veers him onto another path. And makes them collide with a rather satisfying crunch, though Derek helps him up after.   
  
He lets it become a habit, amidst many other bad ones.   
  
At first Derek fears the worst, but they’re actually not that bad as running partners. They make good time and when Derek stumbles into his bedsheets - or more often, his sofa - he sinks instantly into sleep, and wakes up with the sun trickling through the shutters. Stiles makes him take home leftovers that he microwaves for breakfast and tries not to compare to Marie Callendar’s because that would make Laura’s ghost so, so smug and even though they don’t talk much, he learns a little about Stiles, too.   
  
Derek notices that by the time they’re halfway to the bridge Stiles is soaked down to his sneakers with sweat and his heart is thumping like a rabbit’s - loud, painful - under the hoodie but he’s still making the same pace, not talking, not slowing.   
  
Stiles notices that Derek has this habit of stargazing, where he’ll stop every so often and turn his gaze upwards and point out the story of this star and that star, while Stiles is still catching his breath; and he’ll be very good at it, and there will be something in his voice that makes Stiles search for his eyes but they’ll be turned away.

  
****

  
The next victim is a 17-year-old from a rival school fourteen miles from Beacon Hills High. His name is Samuel Carston, he has two little brothers and an A average and a dream of becoming a neurosurgeon. Miraculously, he does not play lacrosse.  
  
They don’t show the mark carved on his forehead in the newspaper photo.   
  
Derek watches the Sheriff take out his walkie as he climbs in the cop car, his shirt still rumpled. Stiles is sleeping; judging by the light in his room he was up till three the night before, probably working on the research Deacon handed him. Some obscure history of the Mediterranean. If Derek really opens his ears he can hear him snoring, probably drooling all over his pillow. His room is a mess but Derek will save the lecture for later, since it hasn’t reached Scott’s-socks hazard levels yet.   
  
Watching the Stilinskis reminds him why he doesn’t like to stay in the same place for too long, because these people have lived here for over sixteen years and it shows in the layers of scents that’ve accumulated in the hardwood - the imprints of mud and lacrosse gear through every room in the house, the suggestive smell of a dog long ago, or maybe the neighbor’s, the years upon years worth of whiskey, a sour smell, Scott in every nook and cranny including the closets, the light note of a woman’s perfume that Derek struggles to make out at first, and then can’t forget. No wonder Derek prefers the nomadic life; to keep on the move, work by pit stops, leave a little behind but escape with most of himself safely intact.   
  
See, it’s dangerous to build so many layers of memory in one place. Takes just one fire to destroy them all.

  
****

  
The next crisis isn’t a death.   
  
It’s a betrayal.  
  
“It’s his loss.” Stiles closes the laptop with a click, stretching out a leg. “Peter’s an idiot if he thinks they’ll leave him alive after they’re done using him.”  
  
“Peter’s a lot of things,” Derek says, “but not an idiot.”  
  
“He’s a murderer,” Stiles says.  
  
“He’s a wolf,” Derek says, watching the raincloud drift in front of the sun, not bothering to shut the door behind him.  
  
Not bothering to calibrate the run that takes him through three lanes of traffic, several angry drivers, a collision with one that leaves the car worse off; not caring where it takes him, and it takes him into the rain, into sheets of gray in front and behind and it’s hard to see but the engine inside him brushes past the heaviness of his soaked jeans like it’s nothing, like it can propel him forever.   
  
Derek goes past the warehouses.  
  
There’s no joyous leap or anything and he doesn’t even notice when he crosses the official city limits out onto the open road; everything’s become instinct, become motion, become longing and thoughts without words, feelings without memory, things that take him further, further south, further to brighter places.   
  
Further away.

  
****

  
The sunlight is glinting off the oily film in the puddle when Derek comes to.  
  
His head hurts, and his mouth is dry, but it’s not because of the sun. He stands up and looks at it, looks at where it’s setting. The wind is warm now. There’s a gas station a few hundred yards away, a red impression in a yellow sea.  
  
His jeans are muddy and ripped at the bottom but the pulsing inside him’s telling he can keep going, telling him to keep going, so he does something he hasn’t done in a long time.   
  
“Where to,” the man says, who looks about fifty and weathered, skeptical, not-right-looking without a cigar.  
  
“Can you take me to Beacon Hills,” Derek says.  
  
“That’s the damn foolest idea I’ve ever heard,” the man says. “They’re practically evacuating that place now.”  
  
“You with one of those dumbass militias?” the man says.  
  
“Dumbass, maybe,” Derek says.  
  
“Can you take me there,” Derek says.

  
****

  
Stiles is standing on the porch with flour in his hair and the sun is a red river on the horizon when the man drops Derek off in front, leaving as goodbye a single, softer look at the porch and back that makes Derek turn away and hop off quickly.  
  
“Hope you’re hungry,” Stiles says, biting his lip.   
  
“Always,” Derek says, watching the mouth twitch upwards.

  
****

  
Nothing is ever simple.

  
****

  
Jackson takes a claw across his chest that draws an angry line from his sternum down to his vees, and draws Lydia’s fussing for the next three days as her nights snap up medical training from Dr. Deaton and her eyes set into a worrying sereneness. Jackson heals, eventually, but this claw is shallow and most of the time, they won’t be. These alphas are old blood, old pack, old law, each with a strength and cruelty beyond anything Derek likes to think about.  
  
Beyond anything Derek can fight.  
  
Two days later Scott takes a wolfsbane bullet through his leg, and Allison retorts with her own; but while Scott can heal, the relationship between the Argents and this new hunter clan cannot.    
  
The Argents were always strange ones, anyway, among hunters. Few follow the code these days.  
  
Even for humans, should they ally with wolves.   
  
Stiles’s body when he grips his shoulder feels stronger than it did before, but it’s still so slender, so crushable, a soft-skinned thing Derek could sever into pieces with one claw and watch as the arteries give up the life. The boy’s eyes are huge in the porchlight when he whirls around. He’s become too familiar with Derek’s presence behind his back.  
  
This is - bad. For everyone.  
  
“I heard what your father said this morning,” Derek growls, pushing past the narrowing of Stiles’s eyes. “About leaving. Take his damn advice, Stiles, and  _go_. Go to your grandparents.  _Now_.”  
  
“I’m not leaving my dad.” Stiles crosses his arms, lifts his chin in an infuriating, beautiful way that Derek would bet his life on to be the mirror image of the woman whose perfume still clings to this place.  
  
“Or Scott,” Stiles says. “Or Lydia, or Allison, or even Jackson, or -”  
  
“I don’t care what you want,” Derek says, feeling the redness well up into the edges of his vision. He has to make himself step back; swallow. “Because  _they’re_  not going to care what you want. We’re wolves, remember? We’re  _killers_. Your little display of nobility isn’t going to impress anyone - hell, Antoni even made his name killing mothers who tried to save their children -”  
  
He bites the rest off, too late.   
  
“You can’t stay here, Stiles,” after the moment has passed, in which Stiles’s eyes remain steady. “ _You’ll die_. We’ll all die. They’re going to kill everyone in this damn town, and  _I. can’t. do anything about it_.”  
  
“Why does it always have to be you?” Stiles, quietly.  
  
“Is that a rhetorical question,” Derek says.   
  
“Because you humans are  _nothing_  in this city,” Derek says. “It belongs to wolves now, remember? We don’t give a crap about bullets, or Homeland Security, or whatever laws you can come up with. We don’t care about families, and  _we don’t care about people_. The only pack law there is, is run or die _._ ”  
  
“In fact,” he says, “ _I’m_  going to run. Soon as I convince Isaac and Jackson, we’re hightailing it out of here. Because frankly, like most wolves, I like being alive more than I like my honor.”  
  
“You’re a smart kid,” he says. “Why can’t you act like one, for once in your life?”  
  
“You’re a wolf,” Stiles says, “so why are you here protecting us?”  
  
“I’m not protecting you humans,” Derek says, around the fangs in his mouth. “I’m an alpha, I have to protect my pack.”  
  
“I didn’t say humans,” Stiles says, as the door shuts behind him.

  
****

  
Derek is still angry five days later, when one of the feds gets eaten by his own dogs, and the curfew gets pushed to eight in the evening when the tips of the leaves and the rooftops are still dipped in light. He doesn’t see Stiles again even though he thinks he can hear the typing in his room, sometimes, from the Hale house, at four in the morning, though that’s probably just his hearing. The mouse is gone and the place seems hollower, somehow, like the silence expands it, like the wind’s filling it up inside. Derek lets the crappy old Panasonic in the living room play through the night, looping through the same news, the same faces, the same pairs of parents whose crying sounds exactly the same everywhere on earth, while his laptop tells him that gang violence and terrorism are now trending topics nationwide ( _is America too liberal on crime? more on Fox news..._ ) and that Peter has been spotted in Vermont. He dumps the pizza boxes in his trunk - the delivery guy’s changed, must’ve left - and lets the smell of all-American cheese and pepperoni settle in cozily in the Camaro with all the other cheap processed things. It was a bad idea to let Stiles in it in the first place, anyways.   
  
Fuck him. Laura spent years blaming herself for their family’s deaths, but Derek’s not Laura. Derek’s an asshole. If Stiles doesn’t care about his life, then Derek doesn’t either. Scott is different, because Scott’s technically his responsibility under pack law (even if Scott doesn’t want to acknowledge it), but everything beyond pack is fair game. Derek will fight if he has to, but he’s just one man, and he’s not going to promise anything.   
  
The gas station looks different in the daylight. Looks blander, plastic, something cheap and human-made instead an oasis of light in the darkness. The wall’s cracked in places and the window needs cleaning. Probably not too many cars left, Derek'd guess.  
  
The boy’s still working there.  
  
Derek dumps the case of Red Bull in his basket.   
  
“Haven’t seen you a while,” the boy says, in a tone that sounds like he’s bored and hoping for gossip.  
  
“Was busy for a while,” Derek says, in a tone that sounds like  _shut up_.  
  
“School sucks,” the boy says. “Wish I’d graduate already. They keep bothering one of the kids in my class ‘cause he’s Indian and Muslim-looking.”   
  
“Sounds like they’re assholes,” Derek says, pulling out the Stouffer’s.  
  
“Totally,” the boy nods. “Rahul’s one of the coolest guys at school. Anyone who knows him for even, like, an  _instant_  can tell he’s one of the good guys. But now these people who’ve known him for years are judging him for his looks.”  
  
“You can’t tell someone’s good or bad in an instant,” Derek says, setting the basket on the counter. “Maybe he just acts like a good guy. He could be a serial killer, for all you know.”  
  
“Nah,” the kid says. “It’s not that hard with some people.”  
  
“Rahul’s not bad,” the kid says, counting the powerbars with his fingers, “my boss’s not bad... well, better than my last one, anyways. You’re not that bad either.”  
  
“How do you know,” Derek says, feeling the back of his fangs with tongue.  
  
“You’ve been coming here every week for months,” the kid says. “And I’ve never seen you touch the cigs, or - the alcohol.”  
  
“Got other bad habits.” After a moment. With a shrug at the basket.  
  
“Didn’t say you’re some kinda angel,” the boy snorts. His eyes lift to Derek’s. “Just that  _you’re not that bad_ , compared to some folks.”  
  
  
****  
  
  
“Scott’s busy, huh.”   
  
“No chewing with your mouth open, dad,” Stiles mutters, over the scribbling on his calc homework. “Yeah, he’s pretty uh, upset by this whole thing because his mom’s working so much at the hospital.”  
  
“He hasn’t dropped by in a while.” Sheriff Stilinski pauses to wash it down with water. “We should get him over for dinner more.”  
  
“Don’t think most people eat dinner at eleven, dad.”  
  
The sheriff chuckles, scratching the side of his cheek. “Right. I, uh -”  
  
“Nah, it’s not your fault.” Stiles puts down the pen, reaches for the glass of red wine. A little, his dad doesn’t complain about. “Long as you stay safe, and they’re paying you overtime.”  
  
“They better be,” the sheriff says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Wipes it with a napkin, sets the napkin down heavily.   
  
“So.” The sheriff, to his napkin. “I guess, uh, Derek Hale’s busy too then?”  
  
The wine glass drops on the table with a clink.  
  
“It’s just - uh, he seemed to be dropping by a lot, and I know this must be a recent thing, and he is, you know, totally exonerated so I’m not worried or anything -”  
  
“Derek’s an  _acquaintance_ , dad,” Stiles says, peering down the glass like he's reading tea leaves. “I was just helping him out with some stuff, because, you know, he’d just gotten back and needed help settling in.”  
  
“That’s - actually really nice of you, Stiles.” His dad sounds surprised. “It’s just - he’s a bit older than your usual circles.”  
  
“Well, he doesn’t need my help anymore.” Stiles pokes at his TI-89. “So he’ll be staying out of our hair now, don’t worry about it.”  
  
“Actually,” his dad says, looking longingly at the wine by Stiles’s side, the farther side, “he’s been helping us out for a while now.”  
  
Stiles’s hand stills.   
  
“Normally we wouldn’t let a civilian anywhere near this,” his dad says, “but Derek’s got military training, and he’s a - well, he’s a great shot, and we’re a bit stretched right now, so we’re being a bit practical here; figured he’d do it anyways.”   
  
Prodding at the asparagus, his dad says, “He’s been helping us keep watch at the hospital for weeks now.”  
  
Stiles is silent for a moment.  
  
Then: “He still there?”  
  
“Just saw him this morning,” his dad says.   
  
“God, he’s such a dick sometimes,” Stiles mutters. The sheriff raises an eyebrow.   
  
“Well, I don’t like the vigilante-types either, but -”   
  
“I don’t mean that,” Stiles sighs.   
  
His dad reaches over to pick up the wine glass.   
  
“I hate the strong and silent type,” Stiles says.   
  
“You don’t talk much either,” his dad says.

  
****

  
The next time they meet is at the old arcade.   
  
Derek doesn’t look at him. Stiles doesn’t look at him either.   
  
There are four of them. One of them, the female, isn’t even inside but is easily the strongest wolf Derek has ever sensed this side of the Missouri, with a lunar  _force_  that ripples through his shoulders and strains several of his ribs and makes him want to whimper and roll over with his tail tucked between his legs. They’ve even stained their claws in wolfsbane this time, as if the alpha strength wasn’t enough to ensure the blow would kill.    
  
Scott and Isaac get slammed into the pinball machines, which collapse into rotten dust amid broken bones. Jackson takes a poisoned slice through his shoulder, and the blood keeps Lydia somewhere between screaming and bombing the entire place into oblivion, fuck them all. Stiles is, somewhere behind Derek, but he hasn’t said a word, and Derek’s too angry to make him.  
  
The Argents’ bullets don’t slow them down. The ash trap does, though: makes two of them pause, just for a sec, as the napalm tumbles into their backs.   
  
“Holy shit,” Lydia says.  
  
The wolf howls.   
  
That’s how Stiles is still wide-eyed when the glass crashes behind him. That’s how Stiles is still in the same place when the female, rearing up, severs that place in two.   
  
That’s how Derek is staring at the blood on the floor, when he collapses to his knees above it.  
  
  
***  
  
  
\- Stiles looks - like he’s crying -   
  
\- but he’s not - hurt -  
  
\- huh, so that’s why his chest feels, open, like it’s gaping, like it’s lighter -   
  
  
****  
  
  
It doesn’t hurt that bad.  
  
  
****  
  
…  
  
It’s slow,

in coming.  
  
Birds.  
  
Antiseptic.   
  
Citrus.   
  
...  
  
A warm triangle, above his left eye. Sunlight.   
  
It takes effort to open his eyes. They were always the last of his senses to develop right.   
  
The room is modern-looking and unfamiliar and aggressively white.   
  
The other window, the wall-spanning one, is shuttered. There’s murmuring on the other end of the hall. A rolling of wheels, a metallic clinking. There’s the beep of a heart monitor, nearby. There’s a small table to his left with what looks like a card with colored letters on it, and a picture.  
  
It’s a little blurry. The narcotics are wearing off, if they ever worked in the first place. And he’s weak. He tests himself. The toes are numb and a lance of whitehot pain shoots through the right leg when he tries to pull it up, so he stops. His chest, which is bandaged all over, hurts alright, but it’s a dull, throbbing sort of pain that’s nothing like that time with the wolfsbane bullet. Mainly it’s just - exhaustion, several months worth, accumulated in layers and layers inside.  
  
He doesn’t turn his head when the door clicks, a little while later.   
  
“Deaton saved us. And Mrs. McCall’s amazing.” The boy’s voice is slightly hoarse, after standing there like an awkward idiot for a full minute.   
  
“Guess I should thank them.”  
  
“Are you - do you feel okay? Do you want some pills?”  
  
“Most metabolize differently for us,” Derek says. “Same as alcohol.”  
  
“I,” Stiles says, and stops.   
  
He’s standing in the sunlight now, and Derek can’t help but look at him. It’s that black hole thing again, some of Derek’s senses just  _like_  bending towards him like a light through water. It’s something he’ll never understand, something he can’t change, just like that endless engine inside him. Though this is, different.   
  
A different sort of longing.   
  
“I’m an idiot," Stiles says.   
  
The boy's eyes are turned away from the sunlight but Derek can feel, in the shadows, their shimmer.   
  
“It’s my fucking fault,” Stiles says. “You were right. I got you hurt, because I’m a moron -”  
  
“No,” Derek says.   
  
“ _You nearly died_.” It’s unstoppable, that momentum in the tense set of the boy's shoulders. “You were right, I couldn't pull my own weight.” His lip curls up. “Looks like you won that bet, Derek.”  
  
The silence fills up with birds.   
  
“I’ll go,” Stiles says, before the jagged moment's passed. “I’ll do whatever you want. I swear I won’t bother you  _ever again_.”   
  
“No,” Derek says.  
  
“I’ll cover your hospital bills,” Stiles says. “I can offer you a place up in Washington -”  
  
“No,” Derek says.  
  
“The place doesn’t include me,” Stiles says.  
  
Derek leans up on one elbow. His ribs are sore. The boy’s face is wet and he’s standing too far away.   
  
Derek listens to the engine under his ribcage hum.   
  
Running, it’s always running.   
  
(do you ever really stop.)  
  
“You said you’d do anything I wanted,” Derek says, “if I won.”  
  
“I only want,” Derek says, “for you to be -”   
  
(it’s hard to talk, and he’s no good at this)  
  
“I only want,” Derek says, “for you to do something  _you_  want.”  
  
“For yourself,” Derek says.  
  
(running away, running to.)  
  
He doesn’t know why he’s so surprised, some heartbeats later, when soft, tentative lips press against his own.  
  
  
****  
  
  
if night skies are stars and the spaces between them, and humans are people and the spaces between them, what would you call -  
  
  
  
****  
  
  
“Your plumber’s really friendly.”  
  
“Who? Greg?” Derek finally looks up from the skirt steaks. There’s a clanging inside the kitchen that’s rather ominous, but they did a decent job yesterday with the living room, and Derek’s not even sure the house is connected to the gas, so... he probably shouldn’t be complaining much. “He should be, I’m paying him something like three hundred dollars an hour and free fitness tips.”  
  
“Damn,” Stiles says. “I should be a plumber.”  
  
“You should be a chef,” Derek says, poking at the steak, feeling like an idiot. “Some sort of Nobel-winning scientist with his own restaurant in New York.”  
  
“You sound like my dad,” Stiles laughs, and reaches over to hold Derek’s hand, arrest his fidgeting.   
  
A little while later, he says:  
  
“It’s because of my mom, you know.”  
  
The fork in Derek’s hand stills.   
  
“She taught you?”  
  
“No,” Stiles says, slowly. “But after she died, I had to learn.”  
  
“Sometimes it’s nobody’s fault,” Stiles says, “that we become what we have to be.”

  
****

  
“I don’t understand.” Derek stares at the board, at the sink where Deaton’s scrubbing his hands. “Why would they just - leave?”  
  
“This is a pretty tough territory to take,” the vet says, smiling a little in that enigmatic way of his.   
  
“We were losing. With a few more months, they could’ve emptied the city. Killed us all.”   
  
 _Run or die._  Well, they weren’t winning as easily as they’d hoped, but they weren’t exactly dying either.   
  
“Maybe they didn’t have any good reasons to stay,” Deaton shrugs.   
  
“This is the easiest territory for miles,” Derek says. “Oregon, Nevada, soCal - there are larger packs there.”  
  
“I said  _good_  reasons,” Deaton says.

  
**** **  
**  
  
The thing about planets is they need more than gravity and physics. They need things like love, and nurturing, and lights that don't come from stars. They need things like forests, and seas, and skies, things that can’t be built in a day, things that can’t be destroyed in one either. They need things like people who care enough to not start wars over money or oil or God. They need things like people who care enough to plant trees they know they’ll never sit under. They need things like people who care enough to overcome fear for connection. They need people who care, because it’s worth caring.  
  
Because everything has a future, and it's not always the one they deserve.  

 

****

 

Derek doesn’t know if Laura would approve, but at least he’s eating better, and the smell of linoleum’s not so irritating now, when he’s up on the second floor. Voices move below like fish in the water. Somewhere, outside, Isaac is roughhousing with one of the other boys on the lacrosse team. Allison is laughing. Stiles is reffing. 

He can still feel it inside him. The engine. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night with its rumbling echoing in his ears, the moonlight spilling over his blanket, the bedroom looking like a stranger. He could change every tile and panel in this house and it would still be there, he thinks. 

It’s not the only thing though, he thinks, closing the shutters. 

Sometimes he'll wake up at night listening to something else. In the quiet he doesn't have to strain to hear, even though it's unfamiliar, not the rhythm of fear or of a heart pushing itself to catch up. A different tapping.

A different longing. Derek doesn’t know if this one is better, but it’s the one he chooses.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally just a short drabble of a string of dialogues, which is why it flows more like a haiku of a story than a developed oneshot. I apologize if it's confusing because so much has been left unsaid - I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments. 
> 
> Reviews and comments much appreciated, especially since it's my first fic in this fandom. Hopefully first of many though! :) I'd also appreciate a beta, if anyone's willing to put up with my wonky schedule and slow writing.


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